No. 2055

Canvasback Ducks Roasted Garnished with Hominy or Samp

Canards Sauvages Canvas Back Rotis Garnis Avec Hominy on Samp

Pick the feathers from some nice Havre-de-Grace canvasback ducks, each one to weigh three pounds, prepare them for roasting as described (No. 179), lay them on a spit to roast before a brisk fire for sixteen to twenty minutes, more or less according to their size; untruss and dress on to a very hot dish, surround with squares of hominy dipped in eggs and bread-crumbs, then fried, present them whole to the guests, remove to carve and place on very hot plates with a piece of hominy for each person.

Hominy and Samp (Crushed Corn).—Cook some hominy in boiling salted water, spread it on a baking sheet in a five-eights of an inch thick layer and when cold cut it into oblongs one inch wide by two and a half inches long, dip them in eggs and bread-crumbs and fry to a fine color, then drain, salt and dress on folded napkins. Samp is a species of Indian corn crushed to the size of small peas; it should be soaked in cold water for several hours, then cooked in a covered saucepan with water, salt and butter for three hours, placed in a slack oven after it has boiled up once. Put it to cool on a dish, divide it into inch and three-quarters balls, flatten, keeping them thin on the edges and thick in the center, dip in eggs and bread-crumbs and fry nicely to a fine color

← No. 2054 Canvasback Ducks Broiled Wild Duck & Waterfowl No. 2056 Salmis of Canvasback Ducks →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer's canvasback is a spit-roasted bird served very rare, with fried corn squares standing in for a starch. Two of the three components — the bird itself and the meaning of "hominy" — need translating before anything else.

The bird you cannot buyCanvasback is a wild North American duck; since the Migratory Bird Treaty Act it cannot legally be sold in the United States, so the only source is a licensed hunter. A 3 lb Pekin or Muscovy duck is far fatter and much milder and will need longer at the heat to render; a mallard is closer in flavor.
Sixteen to twenty minutes means rareThat timing before a brisk fire produces a breast that is red at the center, which is how canvasback was usually served. Wild waterfowl can carry salmonella and campylobacter, and shot birds may retain lead fragments; if you are cooking for anyone pregnant, elderly, young or immune-compromised, take the breast to 165F and accept that it will be gray.
Spit to ovenA brisk fire here is fierce radiant heat. The nearest oven equivalent is 500F with the bird on a rack over a pan, breast up, about 15-20 minutes for a 3 lb duck, then rested 10 minutes. Judge by an instant-read thermometer in the breast rather than the clock.
"Prepare as described (No. 179)"A cross-reference to Ranhofer's earlier instructions for preparing birds for roasting; look that entry up rather than guessing at it. The bird here is presented whole to the guests and then taken away to be carved.
Hominy is not canned hominyIn this book hominy means corn hulled and broken, cooked down to a stiff porridge — close to what a modern cook makes as grits. Cook coarse or stone-ground grits thick, spread 5/8 inch deep on an oiled sheet, chill until firm, then cut, bread and fry. Canned whole hominy will not set into a sliceable slab.
SampCoarsely cracked dried corn, roughly pea-sized, and not the same thing as grits. It is still sold as samp in South African and some Caribbean groceries. The recipe's several-hour soak and three-hour cook are genuinely required; undersoaked samp stays chalky.
A slack ovenAround 250-300F. The point is to hold the covered pot at a bare simmer for hours without scorching the bottom, which a modern low oven or a slow cooker does more reliably than a burner.
YieldOne 3 lb duck serves two. Figure two to three fried hominy pieces per person and fry them shortly before serving; they toughen as they stand.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean (1894) out of some thirty years running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and canvasback was the most prestigious American game on that menu — the book gives it several numbered treatments in a row. The "Havre-de-Grace" in the heading is the Maryland town at the head of Chesapeake Bay, where the ducks fed on the wild celery (Vallisneria) of the Susquehanna Flats; that diet was believed to give the flesh its particular sweetness, and Havre de Grace birds commanded the highest prices in eastern markets. Market hunting on that scale ended with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which prohibited the commercial sale of wild waterfowl, and canvasback effectively disappeared from restaurant menus. The garnish is the American note in an otherwise French preparation: hominy is corn treated with alkali, a technique taken from Indigenous cooking, and samp comes from the Narragansett word nasàump — a word that entered English in New England in the seventeenth century and, by Ranhofer's time, was doing service on Delmonico's gold-rimmed plates.